The Shattering: the day Spherus Magna broke into three worlds

The Shattering was the cataclysm that broke Spherus MagnaSpherus MagnaA desert world of ancient conflict that became the merger point of the Matoran Universe and Bionicle's true endpoint. into three pieces roughly 100,000 years before the story proper begins. AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. who survived it gave it the name, and they meant it literally: the moment their world exploded and their old lives ended for good.

What caused the Shattering?#

The chain of events runs from a leak, through a war nobody would stop, to a single act of theft that tipped the planet over. Energized protodermisEnergized ProtodermisA sentient substance that could remake or annihilate any being that touched it. One of the Matoran Universe's most lethal hazards. leaked from the core of the planet to the surface, and ice AgoriAgoriThe villager species of Bara Magna, organised by tribe and settlement, who governed their villages and arranged the Glatorian arena system. found it first and discovered what it could do. The other tribes learned soon afterward, and the Core WarThe Core War: the war that shattered a planetThe Core War was fought on Spherus Magna over Energized Protodermis. It ended in the Shattering, which tore the planet into three planetary fragments. began under the command of the Element LordsElement LordsSeven elemental warriors transformed by the Great Beings who refused to end their war even after the world broke., with control of the substance as the prize.

While the war ran on, the Great BeingsThe Great BeingsScholar-inventors of Spherus Magna whose creations shaped the Matoran Universe and whose absence defined the conflicts that followed. collected a sample and worked out two things at once: the spread of the liquid was doing structural damage to the planet, and any attempt to drain it would cause massive damage as well. Their efforts to stop the fighting failed. So they built a giant robot to observe other worlds and other cultures, learn from them so that such a war could not break out again, and then return to Spherus Magna and help repair what had been done.

The fire tribeFire TribeThe master smiths of Bara Magna who forged tools for all tribes before the Shattering scattered them into conflict. never gave them the chance. Trying to claim the power of the energized protodermis for themselves, they broke into the ice tribeIce TribeOne of Bara Magna's six major tribes, the Ice Tribe produced legendary Glatorian like Strakk and survived the Shattering intact.'s well and began siphoning the substance off from its spring. A chain reaction started in the core, and the planet shattered into three.

Where did the pieces go?#

The largest chunk kept the population, which is why the story continues there rather than anywhere else. It held the region of Bara MagnaBara MagnaA desert world of tribal warfare and scarce resources, one of three landmasses that formed Spherus Magna., the White Quartz MountainsWhite Quartz MountainsA jagged mountain range in the northern reaches of Bara Magna, once ruled by the Element Lord of Rock and later home to Surel and the Iron Wolves., the Black Spike MountainsBlack Spike MountainsThe mountain range north of the Bara Magna desert that served as the Skrall homeland after the Shattering, became Baterra hunting ground, and was destroyed when the Mata Nui robot fell upon it. and the area immediately north of the two ranges, and it developed into a new planet in its own right.

The other two pieces became worlds of their own. The one holding the Great Sea was covered completely by water and became Aqua MagnaAqua MagnaThe endless ocean where the Matoran Universe found refuge and Mata Nui made his final stand.. The Great Jungle and the Northern Frost together formed Bota MagnaBota MagnaA verdant jungle moon separated from Spherus Magna for 100,000 years, then restored by Mata Nui himself at the climax of the Core War..

Whether those two are moons or planets is genuinely unsettled. Most media, the Mata Nui Saga and the Glatorian comics among them, consistently call them moons of Bara Magna after the Shattering. BIONICLE: Journey's End calls them planets or planetoids in three places while calling them moons elsewhere, and Reign of Shadows refers to Aqua Magna as a planet. Greg Farshtey confirmed in 2009 that they are Bara Magna's moons, then contradicted that in 2014, saying he did not believe they were and that they orbited Solis Magna instead.

Bara Magna after the split#

A large number of the Agori caught in the region died outright, and the rest sought shelter in the ruins. The jungle that had covered much of the area was reduced to a few trees and shrubs, the desert expanded, and most of the rivers in the region disappeared. The survivors lost the ability to invent new things and were left dependent on whatever remained of the Great Beings' technology.

With the old cities in ruin, the tribes settled into small villages of a few hundred Agori each. The rock tribeRock TribeThe dominant warrior civilization of Bara Magna, built on brutal expansion and ruled by Tuma until internal betrayal and the Skrall's defeat disbanded it., cut off from its homeland along with its SkrallSkrallA black-armored warrior species from Spherus Magna that dominated northern Bara Magna under Tuma's rule. warriors, established an empire in the north near the Great Volcano and kept to its own affairs. The nomadic sand tribeSand TribeBara Magna's strangest tribe, Zesk and Vorox degraded by cataclysm into barely-sentient packs. regressed into a savage, animalistic state, its warriors becoming the VoroxVoroxThe warrior caste of the Sand Tribe, reduced to feral pack hunters in the wastes of Bara Magna after the collapse of their civilisation in the Core War. and its Agori the ZeskZeskThe Zesk were a primitive subspecies of the Agori, members of the Sand Tribe whose genes were altered by the Great Beings and who regressed into bestial scavengers living alongside the Vorox in the Wastelands of Bara Magna.. The other four tribes, having lost most of their GlatorianGlatorianTribal warriors of Spherus Magna who settled disputes through arena combat, until the Skrall conquest enslaved most of them., rebuilt and set up a new social system with the help of Core War veterans and Agori such as RaanuRaanuRaanu is an Agori of the Fire Tribe, distinguished by his dark red and yellow-orange coloration, who served as the leader of Vulcanus and the Fire Tribe on Spherus Magna. He wielded a Flame Blade and Fire Shield as his tools of office. Following the reformation of the planet, Raanu continued to reside on the restored Spherus Magna..

Bota Magna and Aqua Magna after the split#

The survivors on Bota Magna had a far easier time of it, surrounded by a region of plentiful flora and fauna. Some Agori there came to blame the technology of the Great Beings for the disaster and combined their armour with plant matter to move closer to nature. A sand tribe contingent led by KabruaKabruaKabrua led an organised Vorox community on Bota Magna, retained the speech and intelligence lost by his desert kin, and captured a Toa expedition in 2010. built its own city and established hunting traditions of its own.

No Agori or anyone else is known to have survived on Aqua Magna, which was entirely underwater.